


Thorki Drabble Collection

by Anonymous



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Character Study, Drabble, Drabble Collection, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Jane Foster/Thor, Nightmares, Pining, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Pre-Thor (2011), Protective Frigga (Marvel), This is Loki we're talking about so..., Thor: The Dark World, but not really
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:20:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24787597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: I've been wanting to practice my writing style, and I've taken random word prompts to write (mainly) short stories.1. champagne, snore, youth2. adult, drift, notion3. scar, pillar, summer4. pebble, road, mistake5. loss, sand, anchor
Relationships: Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 29
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Champagne, snore, youth

**Author's Note:**

> The words generated were:  
> champagne, snore, youth.
> 
> I wanted to take a dive into Loki's headspace pre-Thor, especially on the eve of Thor's coronation. As per the 'exercise', this is just a drabble and therefore doesn't have much of a plot, aside from Loki's thoughts.

The champagne has long since gone flat by the time Loki raises the glass to his lips. Solid and cold beneath his hands. He could refresh it. He doesn’t. He turns and pours it away, watches the liquid fall in a continuous stream against the tile. Clears the mess with a wave of his hand, a practised flick of his fingers.

It is tainted, like everything that remains from last night. Like Thor, the to be King, asleep in his bed, eyes fluttering behind petal-soft eyelids. Loki’s eyes linger on his form, count the freckles across his cheeks, sun-kissed gold, the short hairs of his beard. 

He has lain here, in this bed, in Loki’s bed, more times than Loki can remember. As boys, first. Wide-eyed and loose-limbed, growing too fast to properly control his strength. He had broken the headboard once. In a fit of childish rage. Had closed a fist around the bar of wood and tugged. It had been amusing, in the way all things were as children, how quickly Thor’s face had flushed red, the stuttered apology on his tongue. 

It had been fixed the very next day, but Loki had made a point of secreting the strip of wood away, tucked at the back of his closet, bundled in cloth and tied loosely with string. He had wanted to remember. He still doesn’t know why. Just that it had seemed important at the time; Thor’s mounting anger, wild and unbridled.

Loki supposes that it had only been natural that he came to control storms, the fast, furious heat of lightning, the loud and unpredictable bellows of thunder. They had always terrified Loki who had spent his youth riding out almost every storm with the blanket tugged over his head, counting his heartbeats echoing in the pregnant pauses between the booms. Like an explosion, he had thought. A far-off rumbling of danger. 

Their father had told them about the Jotuns, the age-old rivalry that stretched between their two worlds. He had feared, then, that it was an invasion. Back before he knew his brother was to harness control of the storms, rein in the thunder and keep his lightning on a leash; a hammer strapped heavily to his belt. 

It had become a tradition from then. Thor would creep into his room, pad across the tiled hallway that split their chambers and knock, twice with quiet knuckles, on the knotted wood of Loki’s door. Loki would let him, still existing in the days of youth were it was inconceivable that he should ever even contemplate sending his brother away. 

Before his love had morphed into something darker. Become a festering infection he could never bring himself to cut out. Before Thor had become brash and arrogant and hot-headed in a way that bred only contempt. 

He would tuck Loki against his side in those long stretches of night, smooth down his hair with the palm of his hand and tell him stories in that clumsy way he strung together words. All action and gore and glory. Stories of the lightning arcing around the room, smiting any enemy who dared to enter. Sometimes Loki could smell the singed flesh, the burned hair, buried in the cloying scent of ozone that followed Thor whenever he went. 

He had never been gentle, but he had always been tender with Loki. Bracketed his lithe form with the hard lines of muscle, only half-sculpted. 

If Loki looks hard enough at Thor’s sleeping face he can discern the marks his youth had left on his face. The slope of his nose that Loki had spent years tracing with small, clumsy fingers as a babe. The set of his jaw, defiantly angled, tilting up to frame his ears. The softness that his cheeks retained, flushed a dusky pink from the heat, the stifling warmth that their bare bodies had exuded, rolling over one another like waves against a shore only an hour prior.

Thor’s chest rumbles, snores as loud as thunder and the heat changes, shifts to gather behind Loki’s eyes. Norns, he misses his brother. Misses the younger version that used to be moulded in Thor’s shape, bold but caring, soft in a way Loki hasn’t seen from him in centuries. 

If he closes his eyes and listens, fantasises about tucking himself against Thor’s chest like he has so many times in their youth, he can pretend. Pretend that they are nothing more than small children, tangled up in naive bravery and defiance, a ball of light cradled in Loki’s palm as Thor casts shadows across the sheets with his fingers.

The room echoes with the memory of laughter and Loki turns, drags his eyes from Thor’s sleeping form and stares at the lightening horizon.


	2. Adult, drift, notion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is no luxury in being king. Not like he had imagined as a child. There is no crown, even. His throne is nothing more than a chair, the view afforded to him only one of despair and emptiness, a never-ending blackened void and dark, desperate faces. It weighs on him, presses his shoulders down until they stoop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the words:  
> Adult  
> Drift  
> Notion. 
> 
> I wanted to play around with Thor's headspace post-Ragnarok, and a softer, but still haunted, side of Loki. This is basically just emotional hurt/comfort and a rare moment of peace before the clusterfuck that was Infinity War.

_The Statesman_ is cold. Colder than Thor would have thought, and even bundled under the blankets they had found stashed away in boxes he can never rid himself of his shivering.

It doesn’t help matters that there are never enough beds — not enough rooms. Their people may be small in number but the ship is smaller than even that. So they all take turns piling into alcoves when they are not afforded the luxury of privacy. Spare quilts and rudimentary cloth pillows line the walls, the sound of shifting and sighing and the occasional muffled cries from some of the children.

Thor cannot blame them. At times it is all he can do to not do the same. Tuck his head beneath his blanket like he had when he was young and sob. But he is a king. A leader. He must keep up his appearances if nothing else.

They had tried, for a time, to give him a permanent residence in one of the converted bedrooms. ( _“But you are king now, my lord. You above all of us have the right to privacy.”_ ) He had made a point of declining such requests that they had eventually given up. Come to accept his presence in the atrium with the rest of his people.

_”Your father would be proud,”_ Heimdall had informed him and Thor hadn’t the heart to turn the words down. He hadn’t needed to, he supposes. He never had been able to keep _anything_ from him. It had been frustrating in his youth, but now it is a debt he will never be able to repay.

Heimdall _sees_ what Thor himself cannot. Shines a light on the parts of his mind that he would rather keep hidden in shadowed corners, left to collect dust and fade with age.

There is no luxury in being king. Not like he had imagined as a child. There is no crown, even. His throne is nothing more than a chair, the view afforded to him only one of despair and emptiness, a never-ending blackened void and dark, desperate faces. It weighs on him, presses his shoulders down until they stoop.

Sometimes he can hear his mother chiding him, forcing his chin up with a whisper of a finger. It is gone in the next moment and Thor wrestles with the heaviness that sits on his chest.

But his chest lacks any space for any further mourning. He does not think he can ever grieve like this again. Nothing can hurt as much as this does; The loss of his parents, his planet, his _home_. Nothing except perhaps Loki’s death.

But now even _he_ has disappeared again, and Thor shouldn’t allow that fact to surprise him, but his brother always had dealt in the unexpected. And on a ship so small it really is nothing but a feat of genius (or incredible determination) to remain so hidden, so shrouded from everybody’s eye.

If Thor hadn’t managed to catch glimpses of him in and out of meetings, or if Heimdall’s watchful eye hadn’t assured him that he was safe and unharmed, Thor would have long since torn the ship apart in his desperation.

Thor misses him desperately in this empty stretch of silence. When his duties are not calling, when his people have retired for the night. He had always taken Loki’s presence for granted until suddenly it was nothing more than a phantom pain — an ache in a chasm that Thor could never reach into, the cold bite of empty space beneath his feet, the feeling of dirt settling into his skin.

Both times he had witnessed Loki’s end and the pain had only increased with each. He cannot allow himself to even imagine a third. Loki is, in truth, his last remaining anchor. The only thing tying him to this realm beyond that heavyweight of obligation and expectation. Sometimes he is convinced that Loki is gone. That he never returned from death. Died in Thor’s arms on Svartalfheim. His subconscious must think so too, for all it shows him of Loki’s pale body, limp and lifeless; a blow Thor could not deflect, the sickening snap of bone, a blade plunged into his heart.

He dreams of it so often that he worries he has become prophetic, that they are an omen, and a shadow of the pain of the grief he will endure resides across his bones, coats his throat until he is choking with it.

The room is always silent when he wakes, breath strained and ragged even to his own ears and he is _alone_ , so painfully and crushingly alone that it is all he can do to bite down the tears. Habitually he reaches, curls fingers into nothingness where he swore a presence had resided and catches the tail-end of Loki’s scent on the still air in the atrium.

It is enough, he thinks, to not _see_ Loki. If this is all his brother will permit of his presence, a balm to aid him in his nightmares, then Thor will take it — whether he be conscious for it or not.

And, he supposes, for all his nightmares there also exist good nights. When his dreams are blissfully empty, devoid of anything besides the sensation of a gentle press of lips at his brow or fingers through his hair. He clings to those feelings, caught midway between unconscious conjectures and tentative realities. He does not need to conjure a face into existence to see green eyes and tousled dark hair, the soft upward curve of lips, eternally amused.

But tonight it seems even clutching to those fragments is not enough, his mind snatching them away and replaces them with cruel, violent images. Blood slick against his hands, Loki’s body floating adrift in space and Thor, indifferent, _always_ indifferent, as the ship drifts aimlessly passed. Or the blame. The hard, broken blame on his brother’s face. Young. Younger than he has been in years, trusting and innocent and enamoured, before the first seeds of doubt had been sown, before they had time to bloom into something dark and festering.

Thor cannot protect even that version, not here. When he is so utterly helpless, trapped in the lines of his own body, bound by the buckles of his armour. He watches passively as Loki rots; shackled to a dungeon wall, the dirt of Svartalfheim, laying weak and unmoving on the cracked concrete of Midgard.

A scream builds in his throat, gathers and coils and mounts, stuck behind the sharp edges of his teeth, the flat, immovable plane of his tongue. He cannot make a sound, never can in these dreams, just _watches_ and _waits_ until the last of the fight drains from Loki’s form. Until his eyes fall flat and dull and lifeless, his skin an ashen toned blue.

It is the sound of his own screaming that awakens him, and the soft, cool touch of a hand pressed to his cheek.

“Hush,” Loki murmurs and Thor sobs, tangled in midst of dreams and realities. He lunges forward to curl his fingers around Loki’s skin, _real_ and whole. “I am here, hush.”

Thor does not. He cannot. He sobs brokenly, buries his face in the juncture between Loki’s shoulder and his neck, noses gently at his pulse point that races under his touch. Loki’s hands shake where they press Thor to him and Thor stills, clings to him tighter, fingers digging into soft, silken cloth. It is such a far cry from the usual armour Thor usually sees him clad in, adds a strange air of vulnerability.

“You’re shaking,” Thor states and Loki stills. Thor feels the tremors cease, Loki’s muscles tensing as he holds them still. He stops, pauses and thinks of Loki’s hands on his brow, his cheek, the shaken, bright look in his eyes. _Norns._

“You saw.” It is not a question and Loki, to his credit, does not treat it as such. His silence rings louder than any answer he could have given as he pauses in that stillness, gathers words at his tongue.

“How am I expected to help if I do not know the issue?”

Guilt slams into Thor, a heavy, bruising force that buckles his ribs. His brother is many, many things, but vulnerable is not one of them, and the look of fear upon his face was so _open_ that Thor was momentarily blinded by his rage, aimed wholly towards himself. Loki had seen Thor’s dreams, seen _himself_ reduced to a mess of tangled, broken pieces. And he had kept looking. Time and time again. He had returned to soothe Thor’s nights, watches his own demise just to save Thor from fatigue.

Sparks jump from between his fingers, zigzag up his arms until Loki links their hands, presses their palms together. Warmth pools between them, a soft, golden glow and Thor’s anger melts into something softer, Loki’s seiðr comforting that base, primal need to protect.

Thor chokes around the emotions tangled in his throat, unlinks their hands the second Loki permits it to cradle his face instead. Tugs him against his chest as if he is something fragile, something precious. He is. Norns, he is. Loki is the most precious thing Thor has ever had the privilege of calling his own. His love has never been gentle or easy or whole, but it has always been _pure_.

“Promise me,” Thor whispers into the crown of Loki’s head, “promise me you will not do that again.”

“You are king, Thor,” Loki says simply, “you must maintain appearances. It will not do for your people to see their leader so shaken.”

“ _Our_ people. They are _ours_ , Loki.” Thor doesn’t fail to notice the small shiver that runs down Loki’s frame at the words, or the startled, pleased breath he draws in. “And they have seen me weakened tonight already.”

“No,” Loki replies, “they have not.”

The air around them shimmers, ripples with near-invisible energy — a muted gold barrier. Thor has seen this before, recognises it from their youth. It had been a common spell, one of Loki’s favourites. A shroud of invisibility, his own personal space no matter where he may be physically. He had only ever shared it with Thor a handful of times.

Thor’s chest aches at the memories and he reaches to lay a hand against the barrier, feels the warmth shift and mould around his hand.

“Is this where you have been hiding?”

Loki smiles.

“I was unaware that’s what I was doing.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Thor replies and doesn’t even try to keep the amused disbelief from his voice. In the past, Loki would have bristled, leapt from defence to offence. Thor reckons he would have had a knife in him if it were six years prior. But it isn’t, and Loki is not the man he once was. He is grown, shed the vices of his youth, at least partially, and so Thor’s torso remains blissfully intact and Loki’s smile only grows.

“Are you sure you looked hard enough?”

Thor grins at him, soft, caught, as he is always is, between the lines of fondness and exasperation.

“Now that you mention it, I don’t think I did manage to scour the _entire_ ship more than twice.”

Loki laughs, quiet, and Thor’s chest swells at the sound. A gentle, aching warmth spreads between them, Loki’s seiðr flowing freely from his hands.

“Well then,” he breathes, leans forward to knock his brow against Thor’s, “I believe the fault is entirely your own.” His mouth glistens in the low light and Thor’s gaze is drawn down to it, rests on the centre of his lower lip. He is so _close_ , so real that Thor can barely force down the urge to slot their lips together, Loki’s required concentration for the shroud be damned.

But he is a king, a leader. He must do what Loki had said, set an image, uphold what little ideals they have left to their name.

Loki, it seems, has no such qualms.

Before Thor can protest Loki has sealed their lips and Thor’s fingers press bruises into his shoulders, gasps around a groan that Loki swallows. There is no space in his mind for anything but his brother and the slick, slow glide of a mouth across his own. He shudders, tugs Loki against him until Loki concedes, topples into the space of Thor’s lap.

Thor does not push his luck. He can read Loki’s body after millennia well enough to know when his concentration is thinned. So he slows the press of their lips to a soft drag, runs his palms in large passes down Loki’s back to press against the back of his ribs.

“Stay,” he whispers and feels Loki’s hands tighten around his shoulders, move to thread through his hair, tugging fondly at the short strands.

“Brother,” Loki replies, presses up to brush his lips against Thor’s, more of a fleeting touch than anything solid. “I have never left.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. Please leave a comment or kudos if you enjoyed :)


	3. Scar, Pillar, Summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How many more examples of Thor’s love would scar?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The words generated this time were:  
> Scar  
> Pillar  
> Summer.
> 
> I HC that this takes place a while before the first Thor film, and deals with, partially, the beginnings of Loki's less...positive feelings regarding Thor, as well as young-Thor's tendency towards brashness.

Asgard glittered with golden heat. A certain heaviness of the air, ripe and swollen with flies and humidity and the sickly sweet scent of blossoms that Loki could never decide whether he disliked. Perhaps it was their association with the weather he loathed — the stickiness of those stretching afternoons, far too warm to do anything other than lounge on the grass or his chambers.

Even the infirmary wasn’t exempt from the temperature and the bandage around his head quickly grew damp and sticky, the silken blankets across his lap nothing more than another layer of heavy heat. Thor didn’t mind the temperature, reclining lazily in the chair by the bedside still clad in full armour, a thin sheen of sweat glistening across his skin. Loki would have found it infuriating if his head wasn’t pounding. Or if Thor’s face wasn’t still twisted in guilt, fingers curling around themselves.

“Are you—"

“I am no different from when you asked me a minute ago,” Loki snapped.

Thor nodded, subdued. Loki sighed, his breath hanging thickly in the air, the humidity so strong that he felt he could only inhale a mockery of oxygen, a cloying, suffocating heat coating his tongue like a film.

“I am sorry, Loki. I didn’t—Norns, I didn’t realise you were so close.”

_"No",_ Loki thought, _"you never do.”_ He entertained, briefly, voicing the words aloud. Wondered what Thor’s face would do then. Grimace, perhaps. Avert his gaze, run from Loki’s presence as he always did.

There was a time when Thor would follow Loki as much as Loki trailed after him, in those honeyed memories of youth, tinted with a nostalgia for something that Loki had not realised was lost. Before his presence became nothing but a bother to Thor — a troublesome shadow that would not leave him be. Loki had taken the hint. Locked himself away in his chambers, lounged in the library, sat alone in the fields where he and Thor had once played, tumbling down and down the hills. Pointedly ignored the laughter from only a few yards away, the clinking of swords and mugs and talk between friends. There was no space for him any more.

“Please, Loki,” Thor pleaded and Loki turned, met his gaze.

“What do you wish me to say? You have apologised. It will not undo the damage.”

Thor’s face contorted.

“You were so _quiet_ , Loki. I didn’t even realise you were present.”

A sound rose in his throat, and he coughed, smothered it before it could escape. He was growing increasingly worried that he might do something foolish. Like cry, perhaps. He pushed, sank a finger into his own wound and _pressed._ Hoped it would hurt Thor as much as it did himself.

“You’ve made it increasingly clear that my presence is not something you wish to have to endure. I thought I would spare you the trouble of seeing me.”

He cowered in the face of a truth so large, ducked his gaze to the sheets draped across his legs, raised trembling fingertips to the coarse fabric across his forehead, rough and heavy and—

“Loki—“ Thor choked, the sound cut short by the large double-doors opening across the room, the clipped, curt sound of shoes across the stone floor.

“Oh, Loki,” Frigga breathed, wasting no time in cradling Loki’s face between her hands, eyes sharp and damp. “Are you in pain?”

“No.”

“I will request something, regardless.” His mother always had been too astute to fool.

Her eyes fell on Thor and Loki followed them, lingered on his rounded shoulders, the curve of his neck, head hanging like a weight. His cape fluttered in the breeze from the windows, a rippling swath of crimson, a ship’s sail.

“What were you _thinking?_ ” She hissed and Thor sank lower in the chair, gathering himself before meeting her eyes.

“I hadn’t noticed he was next to me, mother. I would never have swung if I had known. Please, you know I would never."

She softened, removed one of her hands from Loki’s face and rested it on Thor’s knee.

“Whether your brother was present or not doesn’t change the damage you managed to inflict in the courtyard. Of all the places to train, Thor! You are lucky your father is not present, the pillar will take days to replace.”

“I’m sorry, mother. I’ll help with the repairs myself.”

“Yes, you will. Along with your present friends,” she paused and waited for Thor’s nod. “Now, both of you stay here. I’ll return in a minute.”

Silence hung heavily in her absence, broken only by the rustling of curtains and the occasional clink of metal armour as Thor shifted.

“I do want you around, Loki,” Thor said, so quiet Loki thought he had almost imagined it.

“You do not have to lie, brother. You were never any good at it.” He exhaled, felt his shoulders slump, defeated. His anger softened into resignation, a dagger’s edge dulled. “You have outgrown my presence. It is nothing I was not expecting.”

Thor’s face crumpled, denting like armour under a punishing blow and if nothing else Loki’s stomach twisted in a sick sense of satisfaction, a clawing, hollow victory.

“ _Loki_.” Thor blinked, eyes gleaming wetly in the light that bounced from his armour, his hair, his skin. _The golden prince._ Where did that leave him? A muted, dulled silver — nothing more than a shadow across Thor’s skin, a tarnished mark on an otherwise shining lineage.

Thor lunged forward, captured Loki’s hands between his own, fingers frantic across his skin.

“I will never ‘outgrow’ you. I do not know how this notion came to you, but it is false.” Thor was warm. His touch scorching and Loki grimaced, stifled under his honesty, the burning tip of his touch.

“I know when I am not wanted,” he snapped, pulled his hands from Thor’s grip and thrust them under the sheets instead, safe and _cool_.

“Listen to me!” Thor roared and a single clap of thunder boomed from outside. There was no hiding his flinch at the sound, the childish urge to curl up under the blankets. His head throbbed painfully. “I apologise. I didn’t mean to—"

“I know.” He did. Norns, his brother was many things, all of them infuriating and arrogant and brash, but none of them _cruel_.

“I love you,” Thor said — so earnestly that Loki’s chest clenched, tightened painfully around itself.

His hair shifted around the bandages, fell across his brow and he could feel the wound closing already, knitting itself together into a line of jagged, torn flesh. He wondered how many more examples of Thor’s love would scar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the love I've received so far! I started these just as a means to practice my writing and try to get out of a rut, and I honestly didn't expect so many people to enjoy them! If you enjoyed, please leave a kudos/comment :)


	4. Pebble, road, mistake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The words are:  
> Pebble  
> Road  
> Mistake
> 
> The idea (that's actually canon, I suppose) that Loki wasn't in his right mind during The Avengers is one that's stuck with me, but never enough to make an entire fic from it. For some reason, these words really inspired me to write a ficlet about it, especially what happens after Thor takes Loki to Asgard. I took the 'mistake' here to be that they were not sent directly to Asgard as they were supposed to be, but rather ended up on a different part of Midgard. 
> 
> I'm a Slut for soft-Loki, and after being body-slammed by Hulk, beaten within an inch of his life and brain-washed all in the same day, I figured that some of that anger would melt away into sheer exhaustion, especially as the effects of the sceptre wore off fully. (Also Thor's anger/concern hybrid towards Loki during this time period is always fun to write!)

Asgard doesn’t come into view as they materialise and for a minute Thor stands, dumfounded aside the road. Tarmac and concrete and the sound of waves crashing in the near-distance. Still Midgard, then. Loki still stands to his left, bound and gagged, looking as confused as him. This wasn’t his doing. He holds his gaze, defiant, and raises his wrists, taps the metal across his mouth.

“You believe me to trust you? After all this?” The wave of his hand hardly encompasses all the damage Loki has inflicted, but Thor must make do with what he has. Loki blinks at him, owlish and _innocent_ and the familiar rage rises in his throat, boils his blood. It is a pendulum swing, loving his brother — caught perpetually between frustration and relief.

If Loki was not under his care he might have slain him where he stood.

The thought is unbidden, and he recoils, swallows around the nausea. He would never. He would _never._

The gag is unfastened before Thor realises what he is doing, smooth metal folding neatly from Loki’s mouth and into his palm. His fingers tremble. He can’t find the strength to deduce whether it’s from horror or anger but Loki smiles at him regardless, all bright-eyes and sharp-teeth.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting a detour,” Loki drawls and Thor steels himself, closes his eyes and evens his breath. Loki is looking for a fight. Thor will not give it to him.

“Is all of Midgard so… _human_?” He asks, kicks at the dirt with the toe of his boot. “Perhaps I should have destroyed all of it while I had the chance.”

“Silence!” Thor booms and something _snaps_ , the sight of something so broken, bloodied, lifeless bodies and such destruction. His _brother_ responsible for such destruction. His fingers curl firmly around the base of Loki’s throat, palm pressing unrelentingly into the skin. Blood roars in his ears and for a moment there is nothing but this — Loki’s throat beneath his hand and this blinding, bright rage. But Loki’s eyes shift, facade slipping and there is a clarity of _fear_ present that wasn’t there before. Loki’s muscle tense, wincing as if expecting a final blow, eyes darting between Thor’s arm and Mjölnir hanging from his waist.

Thor drops him and stumbles back, buries his hand in his hair and tugs. Norns, he feels sick. He can count on one hand the number of times Loki has looked that afraid. None of them past his teenage years. And never directed at _him_.

“I apologise,” he whispers, voice hoarse. Loki doesn’t reply and Thor reaches for him, slow and placating, brushes his knuckles as gently as he is able against the blossoming bruises at his neck, traces the network of veins weaving beneath his skin, _so pale, always_. He unclasps the ties from Loki’s wrists, rubs at the raw skin with the pad of his thumb, does his best to soothe the irritation.

He is, in truth, expecting to be stabbed. Or at the very least struck. He is expecting anger. Barbed words. He is not expecting the tension to drain from Loki’s body — all cut-strings and sagging shoulders as he collapses boneless into Thor’s hold. He breathes in short, aborted puffs, tilts his head until it rests against the hollow of Thor’s throat, presses against the metal collar of his armour.

Thor’s throat spasms under the touch, clenching around the knot lodged in it. Pointedly ignores how light Loki’s body is, bordering insubstantial as he lifts him, cradles him to his chest like a babe.

There’s a rock close-by. Jutting from the swell of the sea; grey and weathered and flat. He places Loki down gently, brushes stray hairs away from his face, pale and cold and clammy and it is _wrong_ , all so wrong that Thor’s hands shake with the effort it takes to not put his fists through something.

Loki pushes away from him as soon as he is able, steadies himself with an arm behind his trembling body, stick-thin and weak. Loki, vulnerable. It is not something Thor believed he would ever see again. He stares and it is like watching the sea roll backwards.

There is no time or place for his anger, so he swallows it down, yanks his feet from his boots and lets them dangle in the water, cool and rippling gently in the lulls between the cresting waves. It is not a sand beach like those of his youth. There are no golden fields here, no stretching dunes of warmth. Only pebbles — smooth and cold and irregularly round. An ever-widening swath of grey and brown and sienna. The air carries nothing but salt.

“I waited for you,” Loki says, quiet and wavering. “I called for you. I had thought—“ He stops, shudders in a breath and winces, quick and sharp. His ribs. Oh, gods. He’d forgotten, in the chaos, the crater they had found Loki in. sunken concrete and fractured glass.

“You’re injured, come, let me—“

Loki bats him away, slaps his hand with such force and familiarity that Thor is helpless to smile.

“Did you even look?” He hisses and Thor blinks in the face of his mounting anger, eyes sea-green and wild. They were wrong, before. All wrong. Too blue, too pale; red-rimmed and swollen. He didn’t notice it then, but he notices it now.

Loki catches his wrist when he tries to lay his palm against his face, nails biting harshly into his skin. Violence is not above them. It never has been. But it is achingly familiar, this routine. Push and push until something gives, something breaks. A splintered bone, a fractured mind. He is so very tired of fighting.

He swallows and answers.

“I had Heimdall search every day, Loki. He couldn’t—Norns, even he thought you dead.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Loki’s thigh is small under Thor’s palm, fragile and thin. He had always been lithe, but Thor was willing to bet that underneath all that armour, all that leather, his bones were pressed against the thin veil of his skin, stretched so thin it might tear. “Did _you_ look?”

“Loki, I searched every realm I could think of. I could not accept that you were—“ _dead._

“Yet you gave up.” It isn’t a question. He tightens his hand around Loki’s thigh, feels the flesh give a little before meeting hard, solid bone. Fragile and frail and he cannot. Not any more. This distance, this expanse between them, is driving him to the edge of insanity.

“Come here, please,” he pleads and pretends to not notice the crack in his voice. The tears amassing in his throat. Gathers Loki in his arms and tugs until he spills into his lap, all long limbs and exhausted, clumsy coordination.

“You left me.”

“Yes.”

“I was alone, Thor. I was alone and in pain and you _left me there._ ”

Thor could not stop the tears if he tried, trembles and shakes and clutches Loki as tight as he is able without injuring him further. The guilt threatens to break him.

“I did.” The admission doesn’t ease the lump in his throat, the heat behind his eyes. But Loki relaxes further into his hold, tucks his face against Thor’s shoulder and breathes. The waves climb to lap around his ankles, his shins, and Thor rests his chin on Loki’s head and watches his skin shift beneath the waves. He counts the swells of the sea as it rises and falls, the gentle rhythmic crash against the shingles.

“I did not mean to,” Loki whispers and Thor clutches onto it before the wind can snatch it away. “He gave it to me.”

“Who did? Who gave you what?”

Loki tenses, shakes his head so fearfully that Thor hushes him, runs his palms across the length of his arms.

“I am tired, brother,” he says, in lieu of an answer and Thor knows that questioning him further will prove pointless. There will be plenty of time for that when they reach Asgard. His stomach rolls uneasily. He can only imagine their father's wrath.

“Then rest. I am here.”

All the times he had not been filters through his mind with painful clarity, the sight of Loki’s face, small and tearful and so _afraid_ as he fell, plummeted into that endless abyss of nothingness. He pushes it down, fixes his eyes on the horizon, the stretching blanket of grey clouds and an even greyer sea. Loki’s fingers search, climb his arms and fasten around the material of his cape, crimson fabric clutched tightly in a trembling fist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please consider leaving a comment or kudos if you enjoyed!


	5. Loss, sand, anchor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki does not want to die here. Not like this. Half-buried under shifting sands and an eternally grey sky. It is not what he wants, but it is what he is to get.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Rubs hands together* Did someone ask for another angsty drabble? 
> 
> I have a headcanon that Loki, up until the very last moment, actually believed himself to die during the end of 'The Dark World' and this is the idea that the drabble stemmed from. I got a random burst of inspiration late last night, and I've finished it up this morning. As usual, this is un-beta'd and only edited minimally.
> 
> Thank you so much for all of your support so far, it means so much.

Loki does not want to die here. Not like this. Half-buried under shifting sands and an eternally grey sky. It is not what he wants, but it is what he is to get.

The pain in his side is almost negligible in comparison to the ache in his chest — the feeling of a grief he has yet to experience, the loss of his own life he knows he is to mourn. He is weak now, shattered, and Thor knows it too, towers over him with shaking hands and pale, clammy skin. There is blood in his hair, streaked down his cheek and Loki reaches, brushes the loose strands behind his ear.

He misses.

Tries again.

Gasps when the movement jostles his wound and Thor hushes him, catches his hand and holds it still.

They are both trembling. Thor’s eyes glitter, wide and wet and Loki cannot bear to meet them but he cannot bear to look away.

“We will get you help,” Thor says, presses the hand that isn’t cradling Loki’s fingers against the hole in his abdomen, bleeding sluggishly, sticky and dark. Black, almost, in the dim light. “We will get you help, and you will be healed. I promise, Loki.”

“Do not—“ Loki starts only for his words to devolve into coughs, wet and pained and Thor keens, rocks forward and presses his face to Loki’s shoulder. “Do not make promises you cannot keep.”

“I will,” Thor whispers, reverent and Loki shivers, clutches at Thor’s fingers as tightly as he is able. “I will keep it.”

“Brother,” Loki says, slips his hand beneath Thor’s forehead and pushes him away. If he is to die here, on this cursed land, this damned realm, and go straight to Hel then he wants Thor’s face to be the last thing he sees. Wishes to burn it as deep as he is able; the ticking of his jaw, the glistening, wild look in his eyes. Norns, let him keep this. Let him have this, _please_.

“Do not leave me.” There is an edge to Thor’s voice, glinting dangerously and Loki is reminded, painfully, achingly, of days in their distant youth — that brash arrogance, all shining armour and loud, confident bravado. This is the look, Loki knows, of a man who believes time itself will bend fit his whims, that the corners of the galaxy will fold end to end if he so demands.

_I must,_ Loki thinks but does not say, or _You have already lost me, brother._ Loki knows not how he came to be here, at this moment, what cruel hands of fate rendered him paralysed in pain, shivering and sniffling beneath Thor’s hands, but he cannot find the energy within himself to curse them. Cannot find the energy in him to do anything but clutch onto Thor, his hands, his armour, his face, reach fingers to curl into his hair and _hold_ for all he is worth.

“I love you,” Loki says instead, tongue fumbling over the words until they spill from his mouth, tinged in copper and settling wetly against his chin. Perhaps it is the loss of blood that makes them so easy to say, or that heady, impossible pain. The numbness spreading slowly, extinguishing each of his lighted nerves one by one. Or maybe it is Jane’s presence, a mere foot away from his bleeding body that pries the words from his chest. There is no uncertainty in his mortality, not now. But he can still linger in Thor, haunt those three simple words for all the time his brother may have left. What little shreds of life he has remaining may be fading, but his stomach burns in possessive jealousy all the same.

Thor howls, folds into himself and brings Loki with him, cradled against the hard, cold planes of his armour, harsh and unforgiving. Loki does not care, buries his face against the metal and breathes as deeply as he is able, inhales the scent of cedar, the tang of blood and sour sweat. This close and he can almost smell Thor’s fear — can scent it in the air.

There is something else there too, buried under the overwhelming scent of _home_. It is sharp, all fangs and bared claws. The sky cracks in two a moment later, a bolt of lightning embedding not two inches to Thor’s left and Loki places the scent of ozone; an impending storm, the distant warning of thunder.

“Thor,” Jane calls and Loki tenses, resists the urge to snarl, to snap. Thor turns, lifts his head away from Loki for a moment and no, that will not do. Loki shifts and exaggerates the gasp of pain, lets himself fall limp and pliant in Thor’s arms, plays the role of the perfect brother, the version he knows Thor so desperately wishes to see returned. His brother always had been too easy to manipulate, so gullible. He can feel the second Thor’s eyes fall back on his face, a spark of something electric, something old.

“Hush, I am here. Don’t move.”

Loki would laugh if he possessed the energy but the flare of pain has spread to encompass his limbs, radiating outwards from that bright, flaming centre. Thor’s palm over the wound does nothing but increase the pain, a neon flare, but Loki cannot shift away.

“I am scared, brother,” he whispers, winces under the truth of those words, and watches Thor’s face collapse, thunder roaring in a cloudless, ashen sky. He cannot cling to anything anymore, a muted tingling spreading along his fingers, the palms of his hands. They fall from Thor’s face, land solidly on his own stomach and Thor chases them, cradles the long digits as though they may break at any moment.

“It’s okay,” Thor says, brushes the hair back from his skin and Loki can feel his seiðr fading; the carefully maintained guise slipping. If Thor notices he doesn’t show it, just runs his thumbs across the small etchings on his brow, the raised white lines of a heritage Loki has spent so long trying to erase. He doesn’t think he minds it, not when Thor is looking at him like that. Reverent. Adoring. It is a shame he will never feel his touch again. “I’ll tell father what you did here today.”

Loki chokes, wet, and feels it fall from his lips, pool in the leather neckline of his armour.

“I didn’t do it for him.” It is all he can manage and his mind beats at his tongue, jabs at his mouth futilely. He is not finished. There is more he has to say, to tell Thor, to amend. But his body will not cooperate, falling limp and dumb and stupid.

Then there is nothing but darkness and the lingering echo of Thor’s hands, rough callouses against his face, his brow; an echoing yell of anguish.

Loki anchors himself to the sound, sends all the energy he can muster, every burning atom, every screaming molecule. Something catches, takes ahold, and the pain in his abdomen stabilises to a dull throb, his mind surfacing from whatever murky depths it was held under. He forces himself to lie still and pliant under Thor’s lips, motionless beneath that tender gentle press that he wants nothing more than to push into. Instead, he stills his breath and lets his seiðr slip away completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading :) If you enjoyed please leave a kudos or a comment

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed :)


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